The tea party agenda didn't win itself much positive publicity in the wake of the government shutdown, drawing the ire of leaders even within the Republican Party.

But where Democrats like Congresswoman Niki Tsongas saw "hostage taking" in the conservative movement's efforts to take down the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, local members of the tea party instead saw a successful stand against big government.

In other words, don't expect the much-maligned group to be licking any wounds when the next debt limit deadline arrives in a few months.

"I see them doing it again," said Christopher Latimer, chairman of Framingham State University's Political Science Department, who believes tea party-backed lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have been emboldened by their ability to get most of the Republican party in their corner during the latest fight over the government's spending plan.

Recent gerrymandering of electoral districts has ensured that many of those candidates have little to worry about as mid-term elections approach, he argues. Several leaders of the movement are also newcomers to Washington, and haven't yet learned the value of working toward compromise that more established lawmakers have, Latimer said.

It's that willingness to fight for their beliefs that has also endeared them to local tea party members like Christine Morabito, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party.

"(Cruz) has been called an extremist, but there's nothing extreme about saving the country from financial ruin," she said, adding the conservatives' ultimately unsuccessful bid to defund Obamacare was still worthwhile in its ability to highlight the significant deficiencies of the plan. "Even some Democrats are starting to come around to the fact that it's a total disaster."

Merrimack Valley Tea Party member Ted Tripp said the collateral damage of the resulting shutdown - closed national parks, furloughed workers - was primarily President Barack Obama's fault. Given another chance, he believes conservative lawmakers should be willing to go even further, and let the country's debt limit expire.

"The tea party really stands for two things, at least from my perspective: We stand for the Constitution and we stand for reducing spending in Washington," he said. "Any chance we get to pursue those two things, we should take advantage of it. (Whether) it's shutting down the government or hitting the debt ceiling, we should do it."

Tsongas, who arrived back in Massachusetts on Thursday, said she hopes conservative lawmakers won't heed that advice, however, and instead realize there are more productive alternatives.

"I think there is room to improve the Affordable Health Care Act, but you can't do it this way," she said, by "holding it hostage. (Obamacare) is reflective of a very real need out there, and I think we have to give it time to work."

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Tsongas said Democrats and Republicans ultimately need to compromise if they want to tackle the nation's larger issues of cutting spending and reining in the deficit.

Latimer doesn't see that happening.

"There will be no move to moderation," he said, as long as hardliners on either side of the aisle can continue to galvanize their base, as the tea party candidates have.

In the last two weeks, for example, Morabito said the Greater Boston Tea Party has added 28 new members, many of whom are just "waking up to what's going on and are discouraged there are so few people in Washington watching out for the taxpayers."

"That's always been a tough challenge for us, to get our message out there. We don't have the media on our side, we don't have the bully pulpit like the Democrats do," she said.

She said especially in Massachusetts, which continues to remain solid blue, tea partiers might be better off focusing on local issues and elections, rather than devoting too much of their energies to the battle in the nation's capital. The group has a petition going around to repeal the state's automatic gas tax, for instance.